Decalogue, The - VI: "Thou Shalt Not Commit Adultery." (1989)

Directed By:Krzysztof Kieslowski (The Double Life Of Veronique; Three Colours Trilogy)

Overview: An obsessed young voyeur begins to insinuate himself in the life of the woman who lives in the building across from him.

Performance:

The naive, young acned boy offsets perfectly the mature, experienced woman with a very healthy sexual appetite who lives in the building across from her, but who cast the ugly, B-grade porn reject as her lover? You'd think she could do better...Rating: 8

Cinematography:

The best way of framing a story about a voyeur is indeed by making the lens a watcher. Hitchcock knew it, and Kieslowski knows it. Even after five different episodes, I'm still astounded at how this looks so much more like film than television. You can thank the choice of naturalistic sets and lighting over the flat matte that TV studios are known for.Rating: 8

Script:

For the first time in the series, the word 'sin' was mentioned. Perhaps I was wrong in thinking that Kieslowski would maintain a theme of sinlessness in the acts being committed, but I hoped for it. "Do you know what a sin is?" asks the completely unremorseful woman, who seemed to bring up sin to deter the young boy from obsessing about love. As dialogue goes, I found this the most uninspired of the series to date because the characters were nowhere near as deep as I've grown accustomed to expect.Rating: 7

Plot:

Seems the definition of 'adultery' they went for was the less common 'person who has unmarried sex', rather than married person who cheats. Why they went that route is of no consequence, the story they chose to tell is fairly predictable: boy stalks girl, boy meets girl, girl thinks about boy. A tale worth telling is worth telling with uncommon flourish. I thought these two characters were far too two-dimensional for Kieslowski. I suppose all episodes can't be genius. Rating: 7

Mood:

The carefully-paced unfolding of Kieslowski's tale keeps you in the same mindset as has been established in all the other episodes of The Decalogue, (a touch of tragedy in a very human setting)however I must admit that I'm a little disappointed that aside from the incident with the spilt milk, the symbolism wasn't as prevalent as it's been in the past. Rating: 7

I don't know. I think I'd consider it an honour if my voyeur spent good money on better spying equipment...

Overall Rating: 74% (Still Good, Even If I Felt A Little Cheated)

Aftertaste:

Better than most television, we are made to explore film-class humanity, rather than some fake red-head making promises while dramatically removing his shades and suavely cracking out comic book one-liners as he promises to bring 'Corruptor X' to justice. Above all things, The Decalogue is about human experience and beyond the mockudrama that we find during primetime nowadays. It's like sex or pizza. Even if it's bad it's good.